Drowning
by charrrmed
Summary: A spell killed Bonnie, and Damon reflects on the 6th anniversary of her death. THIS CONTAINS SPOILERS BASED ON THE TRAILER FOR EPISODE 10. IF YOU'VE SEEN THE TRAILER, THEN YOU CAN READ THIS.
1. Chapter 1

**Summary: A spell killed Bonnie, and Damon reflects on the 6th anniversary of her death. BASED ON THE TRAILER FOR EPISODE 10, SO IF YOU'VE WATCHED THAT THEN YOU'RE GOOD.**

**A/N: This was written for skysamuelle at the Bamon Drabble Party on livejournal.**

**The Prompt: 'I see signs now all the time, That you're not dead, you're sleeping, I believe in anything that brings you back home to me' (Bloc Party).**

**Disclaimer: I don't own the characters.**

**Drowning**

The scotch traveled down Damon's stomach to mix with the pain, guilt, and resentment that churned there. He stared unseeingly into the fireplace, the only light in the entire mansion. He was home alone. Stefan always disappeared off to some place this time of year. He didn't know where he went every time, but he knew he did not go to Elena.

His mind was six years in the past, in the tomb the night that Bonnie fell for good. He had not been aware of what was happening to her. His attention had been focused solely on Elena, trying to keep her from going inside the tomb, trying to keep her from getting involved. Everything and everyone else had been white noise. He had been preoccupied with keeping Elena from carrying out her apparent death wish. He had been in love with her, and thus he had not wanted to lose her.

A condescending smile fell on his lips when he thought of what he had considered important back then. He leaned his head back on the chair and closed his eyes to better see it, to better remember it. This was how _he_ commemorated the anniversary of her death.

He would learn from Stefan that her nose had started to bleed during the spell. She was visibly weakening, but she had used what power she had left to push Stefan away from her when he tried to make her stop. He would learn that Jeremy knew that she wasn't strong enough to do the spell, but that he couldn't do anything to stop her once she had made up her mind. She had told Jeremy that she would be fine, and he had believed her. Damon didn't know if she had known how much strength the spell would require and thus had lied to Jeremy, or if she had truly thought that she would be alright.

Pain clawed inhumanly at his heart leading him to shift in his seat. No surprise that time was not a friend to him: it never had been. The more the years went by, the more it hurt.

He had not seen when she fell. He had heard Stefan yell her name, but he had not been sure why. Whatever it was, he had been sure that they would figure it out.

She had died on the spot. No chances, no last words. The spell had killed her. Jeremy's face had paled to an unnatural white, Stefan had held her as he stared at the tomb walls as if they could give him an answer, and Elena had shaken her while screaming her name. He had stood away from the small circle, looking at her, at the blood still trickling along her mouth to color the sand, at the color fading from her skin.

When he had finally been able to lift heavy feet, he had walked up to them, aware that Elena had started looking at him as if he could do something, and picked up Bonnie's face from Stefan's arm. He had held her head in his hand, his fingers flexing on her cooling skin. Her eyes had been closed. Shut, and he'd stared before gently putting her back in Stefan's arm and stepping back.

Tears pricked his eyelids in the almost darkness. He didn't turn on lights anymore.

He had not cried when she had died. He had not even gone to the funeral. He had not been angry when he had learned of Jeremy's confession to Elena. He had not cared that much then. The witch was dead. There was something wrong with that, sure, but he had not had so much affection for her that he experienced any sort of emotion. No, when she had died, he had gone quiet. He had run into Elena plenty of times in the days and weeks after her death, her eyes begging him to say something to her, but he had not. One time when they had found themselves alone, she had started to talk about her, had started to cry, and he had told her to please stop, that he didn't want to be doing this with her. He had told her to go find someone else.

He had mostly dealt with questions in the wake of her passing. She had been weakening because of all of the spells she had been casting. Why the fuck hadn't she said something? The witch who was always too happy to tell him no. Had it been because of Stefan? Because he had asked? Because of Elena?

He lifted his hand and slowly took a drink. He worked it down his throat before staring at the contents of the glass. He remembered a time when he had told Rose that caring got you killed. He turned the glass in his hand again and again as he thought.

He had been speaking from a place of hurt. He had loved Elena, wanted her, wanted to be with her. But he had chosen not to pursue her because he loved his brother. He had been speaking as someone who had resigned himself to loving from afar.

It had seemed like such a curse at the time. To love a woman and to know that she would never return those feelings. That you would never be with her.

Caring had gotten Bonnie killed. And she hadn't cared in the sense of romantic love. She had simply cared. She had been weak, and the only person who had known had been too weak to do anything about it. But he had not gone after Jeremy. He had not been pissed at Elena for not knowing what the fuck was going on with her so-called best friend. He had not blamed Caroline, even though she was supposed to be the nosiest one. He had not gone after Stefan even though, as the one whom she favored between the two of them, he could've known this information.

There were just long stretches of time where he despised them all because in the end they, who were supposed to be closer to her than he and who could get her to do anything while he could not, ended up knowing as much about what was truly going on in her life as he did. But he never reacted violently towards them because it's not like he had cared that much. Bonnie had seemed capable of doing the spell, so he had taken her at face value.

No, she had not meant much to him until she died. As the years progressed, she came to mean more and more to him. Each year she was gone was harder than the last, and there was no switch.

Each year he asked himself how he could have gotten so spectacularly distracted. He had told Bonnie that he owed her, yet he never looked to see if she so much as faced an external danger, let alone an internal one.

It was amazing how much Mystic Falls had gone to shit in the two years that followed her death. The death toll of the town had climbed. They did what they could with he and Stefan sometimes calling on the witches they knew, with the Luka guy sometimes helping out. However those witches had lives, and the warlock's dad had whisked him away from the God forsaken town the first time he almost lost his life. A new witch moved into town four years, and her, _her_ he treated as if she worked for them. He treated her like shit. She looked nothing like Bonnie. She acted nothing like Bonnie. She was White American with auburn hair and light brown eyes. She was thicker than Bonnie and also more cooperative. He never failed to remind them all that _she did not belong_. Any time it would seem that the group would start to relax around her, any time it would they would laugh with her, he would say something, or not say anything, just to ruin it. When they would get together to eat and celebrate, he would tag along just to remind them all that the reason they knew this witch was because they couldn't bother to pay attention to the last witch they knew.

_He_ was the reason everyone still felt like shit on this day 6 years later.

His throat closed up, and it was hard to swallow the liquid. _He_ drowned in pain all of the days of the year. Random memories of the witch came to him while he wasn't sure how often Elena and Caroline looked at the pictures they had of her. He would think about the hard glint in her eyes when she would address him, the smirk on her face as she'd walked away from him that day at the Lockwood wake.

He let the glass fall on the carpet and grabbed his head. It hurt all of the time. He remembered trying to figure out, the night she had set him on fire, what the hell he was going to do with her when she _really_ reached her full potential.

He ran his hand down his face and then rested his elbows on his knees. He looked at the sparking fire, and then he turned to his left. He looked at her through desolate eyes. She wore what she had been wearing that day. He knew she wasn't real. Yes, vampires can see ghost, but this wasn't Bonnie's ghost. He had not seen her in 6 years. He knew that Tonia, the witch, has offered many times to call up Bonnie's ghost for Elena and Caroline although she has been smart enough not to make that offer in his presence. The two refused, and he knew it was because of him. He didn't want anyone _summoning_ Bonnie. If she wants them to see her, then she'll haunt them in some fashion until they call on her.

She has not done so in 6 years.

Tears ran down his cheeks as he looked at what his mind continually dreamed up. Bonnie in her long grey shirt that had the wings design on the front along with the long necklace that adorned her neck, the black sweater that covered her up, and her jeans and flats. He truly had not realized that he had paid that much attention to what she was wearing.

She looked at him with her mouth slightly slanting to one side, giving the appearance of a little smile. She didn't have hate in her eyes. She looked at him as if she held no animosity towards him, not because of who he was or any other reason, and that hurt all the more. The witch would never have neither an opinion nor a reaction to him ever again.

He had thought he was cursed at the time. To love Elena and to know that she would never return those feelings. That he would never be with her.

He watched Bonnie turn and walk away. He turned to stare at the fire as more tears streamed down his face.


	2. Chapter 2: Elena

**A/N**: The other characters kept bothering me to show their point of view about Bonnie's death, so we'll start with Elena! I thought it would be a little hard to write her because I had to keep the resentment I feel towards her for her lack of appreciation for Bonnie in check, I had to remember that she does indeed love Bonnie (despite how she acts. Ugh. I feel that if Bonnie died/got kidnapped, Elena would've have a clue. Had to keep that sentiment in check), _and_ I had to include her streak of self-centered-ness (an opinion I don't think the producers share with me). I hope you enjoy!

**Chapter 2: The Right Words**

Elena limply waved her roommate off with a little smile and closed the dorm room door behind her. Once alone, she dug through her suitcases and got the diary out. She climbed on her bed and sat there. The anniversary of Bonnie's death caught her at Duke University this year. There were times that she spent the day with Caroline in Mystic Falls, but most of the time she did not.

All of the humor and light that had been present in her throughout the day faded away. Every year she thought it was getting better, every year she thought she could get through the day feeling relatively normal, she was proved wrong. Guilt coursed through her for forgetting what today was when she woke up this morning. She felt like she was betraying Bonnie for wanting to move on.

She clicked her pen and poised it on the unwritten page. It had taken her a couple of months to move past her parents' death, yet six years later she still mourned Bonnie. She always felt sadder on the anniversary of her death than she did on the anniversary of her parents' death. Introspection suggested to her that it might be because the circumstances of Bonnie's death were more tragic than those of her parents' death. She had felt guilty for going to that party, thereby making her parents come after. She had blamed herself for their death in the aftermath. The Bonnie situation was a little more complex. She leaned her head against the wall as she thought back.

When she had learned of the toll magic had been taking on Bonnie, her immediate reaction had been denial. She had started to shake her head before Jeremy had even finished telling her the truth.

"_No."_

"_You're wrong."_

"_There's no way." _

Jeremy had insisted, and she had insisted the opposite. There was no way she would not have known if Bonnie was going through something like that. Bonnie would never have kept something like that from her.

No, those were the wrong words.

But the _right_ words had been too much to fathom. It had taken her months to admit them. Even now, years later, she avoided repeating them in her mind as much as she could.

_Bonnie hadn't felt like she could tell me._

The right words tore her heart apart.

Bonnie always told her everything. Well, almost always. She knew there were some things she would tell Caroline and not her, and that never bothered her. She had marched to Caroline's house ready to wail on her for selfishly keeping this information from her, because if Bonnie had not told her then she _must_ have told Caroline, contrary to what Jeremy had said.

"_Tell me you knew. Tell me you knew, and you just kept this from me out of some absurd need to share a big secret with Bonnie."_

"_Are you fucking serious?"_

She had staggered back at Caroline's blow. Her legs had collapsed under her weight, under the weight of the implication and she had broken into a mess of tears on Caroline's floor.

She had been inconsolable at the funeral. She had held on to Stefan so tightly that her fingers had turned white. She had shaken during the whole process, wetting his jacket with tears. She had not watched them lower the casket to the ground, but she had known when the pallbearers had started to do it, and she had let out a desperate and blood-curdling, "Bonnie!"

Jenna had pulled her away from Stefan to hold her as tightly as she could as she had cried and heaved while Jeremy stood next to Jenna with his eyes closed.

She wiped her tears and flipped back to the last updated page in this diary. She had written about Klaus, about how messed up her life was, about her desire to not see her loved ones get hurt, and about sometimes feeling helpless that there wasn't much she could do to protect them.

She had never finished writing in this diary. She had started a new one after Bonnie's death. She never wrote about Bonnie though. Every time she felt like it, she felt like starting off with the right words.

_Bonnie hadn't felt like she could tell me. _

And she simply could not have that on record anywhere. Back then she had felt that Bonnie pushed her away. The day they had spoken by the lake, Bonnie had been a little upset that she had not known what was going on in her life.

She had never thought that she too had pushed Bonnie away. She had never imagined that she was actually clueless as to what was going on in Bonnie's life. Caroline had spoken to her about being a vampire; she had told her about Katherine threatening her life. Surely if Bonnie had been going through something like that, or something like what _she_ had been going through with Klaus, she would have told her. Because Bonnie always told her everything. Well, almost always.

To this day it was hard for her to reconcile that Bonnie could see her as unapproachable. That is what she still battled with six years later.

She returned to the blank page and held her pen above it once more. Sometimes she was afraid that she would be like this forever, mourn Bonnie forever, struggle with how much their friendship really had degenerated forever. She did not want that for herself; she cannot imagine spending the rest of her life experiencing this heartache every year.

More and more she was tempted to take Tonia's offer and have her summon Bonnie. She wanted to talk to her best friend. She wanted to know how she was doing, if she hated her; she wanted to apologize profusely and let her know that she wished she had the power to redo everything. She wanted to see Bonnie's face again. But she would never let Tonia do it. Because of Damon.

Damon who never failed to turn a comfortable situation with Tonia into something that was inappropriate; Damon who looked at her whenever she laughed with Tonia or told her she'd call her, or gave her advice on something. Those looks always said the most unnerving things to her.

_You've forgotten Bonnie already?_

_How quickly we move on._

_How could you of all people not know?_

_Why didn't you ask?_

Those looks put her friendship with Bonnie, along with her love for her, in question. Many times she wanted to slap them right off his face.

Her jaw clenched in anger as, for the first time in six years, she wrote a new entry. There was no introduction, just two words.

_Fuck you. _

How dare he? He didn't know anything about her relationship with Bonnie. He didn't know anything about _Bonnie_. He didn't know that she had been crazy for karaoke, that she had hated yogurt, that she used to love to race her and Caroline when they were in elementary school, or that she had planned on getting a belly button ring as a high school graduation present to herself.

He didn't know Bonnie, but for some reason he insisted on remembering her and making them remember too. She had decided that he did not do it because he found some sick pleasure from it. She got the sense that he didn't find their individual remorse enough. She got the sense that his continued grief was frighteningly genuine, and it left her flabbergasted. She wanted to ask him why he cared so much, why it mattered so much, but that seemed so inappropriate. Why would she be eager to move on from her best friend's death?

Maybe she would question Damon after she figured out why his grief and the looks he threw in her direction were so effective.

A/N: I wanted to write Stefan's pov tonight and publish it, but Elena made me cry. I can't handle Stefan's complicated self right now, but know that he's next!


	3. Chapter 3: Stefan

**A/N: Princess0771, I'm happy you're enjoying this! Yes, I feel that they've tempered Bonnie down a bit in order to get her involved with the stupid gang. I'm mad that we never heard her thoughts on Mason's death. I'll never believe that she captured him, knowing that Damon would kill him. Not to mention that Aimee and Sarah died after she said she didn't want anyone hurt. Does she have any thoughts on the increased death in her life since she's gotten in with these people? Her working with them shouldn't be going this smoothly, especially with Damon as part of the group. Lol. Anyways enough with my rant, I only plan on doing the povs of the people who knew about Bonnie. I'm still struggling on whether I'll continue it past the povs (someone else has been excitedly asking me to continue it). Part of me feels like it would be kind of cheap to make it so that Bonnie's not really dead. I don't know!**

**Hellz-on-Earth, it's like you peaked into my mind re:Caroline. *Looks at you suspiciously.* Lol.**

**Thank you everyone for reading, reviewing, favoriting, and putting this in your story alert!**

**This chapter is short, but I hope it's effective.  
**

**Chapter 3: Reciprocity**

Stefan disappeared to the woods every year. Living with Damon, he always knew when the anniversary of Bonnie's death was near. He always left the mansion in order to give his brother privacy, but also so that he himself could find peace from all of the noise in his head. Every year he disappeared to the exact spot that Damon had once attacked Bonnie, the exact spot where he had once saved her. He sagged against the tree closest to where Bonnie had lain with an open wound on her neck, life fast escaping her.

He was above the tomb; right above the place she had taken her last breath. The hole she had once fallen through was in his line of sight. He slowly squatted and picked up a brown and battered leaf with his ringed hand. He had tried to save her. He had been too late in more ways than one. The weight of his failure had him sitting down on the dry earth. Licking his lips, he gently stroke the leaf as his eyes traveled to the half-hidden moon. As the clouds slowly obscured it, he thought back to the day, the moment when it had registered that something was going terribly wrong.

She had been trying to bring the seal down long enough to get him and Damon in there. Hindsight truly is 20/20. His mouth lifted at a corner as he thought of how Damon's fanatical determination to get Katherine back at all costs used to stupefy him. He used to stand back and judge his brother's actions as that of someone completely corrupted by Katherine, completely devoid of his humanity. He used to think the two of them were so different. The truth is that he could be just as neurotically devoted as Damon. Bonnie's death had ripped the cover off of that fact. Damon had been willing to do anything for a selfish, cunning, malicious woman; he had been willing to do anything for a loving, generous, protective woman. But whatever attribute the women who fueled them had, their loyalty resulted in the same thing for both: they got tunnel vision. Damon had _purposely _used people to get Katherine back. He had not thought he was doing the same in his quest to protect Elena from being sacrificed. He had thought that they were all working together. Yet Bonnie was dead. And as he remembered the innocent face of the woman who had thanked him for reassuring her that the monsters behind the door would not get out, the failure that wound so tightly around his neck told him that the difference between what he did for Elena and what Damon did for Katherine did not matter. His tunnel vision had led to the death of the person perhaps most able to help him protect Elena.

He swallowed around the lump lodged in his windpipe. Hindsight truly is 20/20. As he blinked against what was left of the moon, he wondered what ever made him think she was strong enough to bring down the seal all by herself. It had taken both her and Sheila last time, and they had _not_ been able to bring it back up, leading to all of the tomb vampires getting out. Yet he had expected Bonnie to accomplish both feats as if years had gone by since her attempt with Sheila. He shook his head as a sound of disgust left his lips. He looked at the fragile brown leaf in his palm. Love is blinding. Tears gathered in his eyes as he remembered Sheila's words to him.

"_I'll protect my own before anybody else."_

He choked on the memory. She had been the only one in their supernatural world who's first thought had been of Bonnie, always. And she had died. Bonnie had been left completely alone with no one to protect her. He remembered worrying about her after she'd spoken to him on Founder's Day. After her declaration that she had taken it upon herself to monitor Damon, he had realized that he had never met a witch as young as her who had so much responsibility while having so much yet still to learn. He had watched her walk away, shoulders held high despite everything that was weighing it down. And he had done nothing from that moment on but add to it.

What hurt Stefan the most, what haunted him every year, what made this a failure he would never forget, was the fact that she had trusted him. She had gone against her better judgment twice because she had trusted that he knew what he was talking about. He had reaped the benefits of having her trust, and she had gotten nothing in return. He had not watched over her, and he had not watched out for her. He had done nothing for her. He wondered often if she watched them, him. Emily had kept count of what was happening in Mystic Falls since her death. Does Bonnie ever peek in on him? Does she somehow know how much he regretted how things had played out between them? His head is always filled with images and thoughts of what he should have done. He should have spoken to her more; he should have reached out earlier. He had had so many opportunities, but something had always come up.

The night she fell, he had tried to stop her. The most he had ended up doing was catching her before she hit the ground. She had been chanting while Jeremy had been visibly fidgeting next to him. He had frowned at him in question, and Jeremy had ignored him. Elena had come into the tomb telling them to stop, telling them that this wasn't necessary, that if they wanted the moonstone she could simply go in and get it. Katherine would not kill her. Damon and Jeremy had gone to talk to her, with Damon forcibly holding her from the tomb. He had been walking to them when he had heard the change in Bonnie's voice. It had started to tremble, but she had still forged on.

"_Bonnie stop, that's enough!"_

He had asked Jeremy what was going on, and he had told him that she was too weak to do the spell. And it was at that moment that her nose had started to bleed. He had told her to stop, had run to her to make her stop, but she had used her power to push him away. Jeremy had also tried, but he had not gotten anywhere either.

When he had learned the whole story later on at the boarding house while Bonnie's body had been lying on his bed, he had lost his temper. Aggravation laced his words as he got in Jeremy's face.

"_How could you keep something like that to yourself?"_

"_What the hell were you thinking?"_

"_You have no idea what you're dealing with!" _

He had tried to keep a lid on his temper, but he had practically been seething in Jeremy's face while Elena tried to call him down. Jeremy had been the one to succinctly shut him up. Jeremy had looked at him from beneath his lashes, bitterness flashing in his dark brown eyes, and asked,

"_How come __**you**__ didn't know? Huh? If you know what you're dealing with, if you're such a __**fucking**__ expert," he had asked, closing the small gap between them, "Then how come __**you**__ didn't know that she had a limit? That the fucking well wasn't bottomless. Fuck off, Stefan."_

And he had.

A witch's power was not limitless. That was something he had learned long ago from another vampire. It was something he had forgotten.

He cradled the leaf in his palm as he lay down on the ground to stare unseeingly at the dim blue light behind the grey clouds. He let the leaf rest on his heaving chest as his lids grew heavy. He would dream of her. He always did. Every year. He wasn't sure how his subconscious did it, but he dreamed of her, and in his dreams she hated him. In his dreams, she regretted ever trusting him. In his dreams she thought of him as no different from all of the other selfish vampires who used people to get what they wanted.

So he disappears to the woods every year to the spot where Damon had once attacked her. He disappears in order to find peace in the place where he had once saved her.


End file.
